The Black List (7 page)

“The problem is, when it comes to Griffin, ‘help’ is a four-letter word.”

11

Carillo sat in the
back of the room while Tex interrogated Trip. Sheila sat in a chair off to one side, her attention on a
Better Homes and Gardens
magazine that Sydney dug up to keep her occupied during the process. Carillo had not questioned Trip on the plane trip over. He was a smart enough investigator to realize that something bigger than embezzlement was going on, and not just because Trip wasn’t exactly forthcoming with the entire truth.

“I told you,” Trip said to Tex. “I didn’t call that attorney, Ferris Gerard. He just showed up at my arraignment, saying he was representing me. It’s not like I was in any position to turn down a lawyer.”

“Had you ever met him or anyone else from his firm?” Tex asked.

“No. Frankly, I thought maybe it was a perk of the job. They were paying my salary, housing, and transportation, so why not an attorney? I think that’s when I started realizing that maybe this was all too good to be true. All I did was keep the books.”

“That was your job? A bookkeeper?” Tex said.

“Yes. Apprentice, actually.”

“So you had no experience at it?”

“Only a bit. I came from an accounting company. I was let go in the downturn. I wasn’t very good,” he admitted. “Which was why I was so amazed. But they said they were all about second chances, and someone from my old firm recommended me.”

Sheila rolled her eyes, before focusing on the magazine once more. “A patsy, you mean.”

His cheeks reddened, and Carillo, feeling sorry for him, said, “You don’t know that.”

“No,” Trip said. “She’s right. I think deep down I’ve known for quite some time. I just didn’t want to admit it.”

“Okay,” Tex said. “Clearly you were brighter than they thought, or they wouldn’t be after you. What’d you do that got their interest?”

“I’m not sure. There was the time when I first noticed that there was an error in the bookkeeping. The figure that was totaled for the deposit was much lower than the figure I thought was brought in by the last fund-raiser. It was off by at least a couple of hundred thousand if not more. Normally I don’t know how many tickets are sold to these high-priced formal events. That’s handled by Marsha and Shirley in the office down the hall, but I remember passing by their office and hearing one of the women mention that she’d sold two hundred tickets.”

“How much were the tickets?” Tex asked.

“Twenty-five hundred dollars. Each. I remember doing the math in my head, thinking there were a lot of rich people in San Francisco who care more about bringing in refugees than helping the poor people in their own backyards. We’re talking five hundred thousand dollars, and that doesn’t include the items sold in the silent and live auction at the dinner. But when I got the deposit the next week, there was less than two hundred thousand dollars accounted for. I brought it to my supervisor’s attention, and he told me he’d look into it. When I asked him about it again, he said he’d taken care of it, that someone had transposed a figure and he’d fixed it. But the thing is, when I checked the bank statements, they deposited less than three hundred thousand.”

“So two hundred K is missing?” Carillo asked.

“Of ticket money. It’s possible there’s silent auction money missing as well.”

“So that’s when they started riding you?”

“They weren’t riding me at all. They moved me to another building, telling me it was a promotion, gave me more money, less hours, and left me alone.”

“What sort of promotion?”

Trip started tapping his fingers on the tabletop, realized what he was doing and clasped his hands together in his lap. “Phone solicitations. I was in charge of the phone bank. Thirty people in a basement all assigned to cold-call for donations to the refugee program. We’d take it all. Cars, clothes, anything they had lying around, and the stuff didn’t even have to work. We just needed it so that the government would match it with cash. That’s when I called Dorian here in D.C. with my suspicions, asking him what he thought.”

Tex leaned back in his chair. “Remind me how you and Dorian knew each other?”

“We both worked for the same volag.”

“Volag?”

“Short for volunteer agency. He still does, or, did, until . . .” He took a deep breath, looking uncomfortable.

“So you called him,” Tex said, guiding him back.

“Right. He said he’d take a look. As I said, he works—worked for A
.
D
.
E. Affinity Data Enterprises. They’re sort of an umbrella over all these refugee charities. Handled all our accounting. A few days later he said he found the same thing with some other charities.”

“What other charities?”

“He didn’t say specifically, but they’d have to be under the A
.
D
.
E. umbrella. They’re all geared toward refugee resettlement. But he said he wanted to talk to Vince to go over what he found, and then he told me to be careful, that something wasn’t right. I just figured I’d hear from him, but a few weeks went by, Vince was killed in that car accident, and then I was arrested for the theft of the money I pointed out as missing. And that’s when this attorney showed up. And as I explained earlier, I thought it was a perk of the job until Dorian got a message to me at the jail through Sheila and told her to tell me not to mention anything to anyone, especially not my attorney. He didn’t trust him.”

“This . . . volag you worked for, A
.
D
.
E.?” Tex asked. “Based in London?”

“No. Here in the States. They have offices in London. Hell, they have offices all over the place. Any country that’s moving refugees, there’s an A
.
D
.
E. office.”

Interesting, Carillo thought, and he slipped from the room to call Doc in San Francisco. “You busy?” he asked. “I was wondering if you’ve found anything on this charitable organization called A
.
D
.
E. Something’s up with this group.”

“As in they’re not doing any of this out of the goodness of their hearts? You realize I was already one up on you? I started digging into them after you shot your wife’s maid. Well, the fake one.”

“Find anything?”

“Beyond the obvious? Sending an assassin out on an embezzlement case? I’ve tried a dozen ways to see how it connects to this charitable organization and I’m finding nothing. Zilch. Like their haloes are glowing so brightly, you can’t see past all the warm and fuzzy. It’s sending the hairs on the back of my neck prickling.”

If there was one thing Doc was good at, it was sensing things on a deeper level, an uncanny ability to know when something wasn’t right. And even without the hit on Trip, clearly something wasn’t right. “I’ll be careful. Keep me informed.”

12

“Let’s start off with
a basic description,” Sydney said, angling her pencil to the topmost corner of the paper. She decided that she needed to put all her conflict with Griffin aside. Clearly he didn’t feel the same way about her as she did him, and it was now getting in the way of their working relationship. “The woman you saw in the elevator.”

Griffin looked up and to the right as though picturing the subject in his mind. “Five-seven, thin build, shoulder-length, reddish brown hair.”

“Eyes?”

“Brown.”

Sydney jotted the information down. “The thing you remember the most about her.”

“The woman’s hair. Sort of a film noir look.”

Sydney looked at him over the top of her sketchbook, tempted to ask him if he pictured Veronica Lake. But one of the cardinal rules in doing a witness sketch was that you didn’t put words in a witness’s mouth. Every question needed to be open-ended. “Any particular style?”

“Wavy, side part. What else do you need?”

“What were you doing during the hour before?”

“I have no idea. Why do you need to know?”

“Cognitive interview techniques.” She didn’t need to explain it to him. It was something he was familiar with, though probably not when it came to doing a drawing. When used, it could help someone recall the smaller salient details that might be overlooked.

“The hour before? Paperwork.”

“The
entire
hour. Actions, thoughts, weather. I’m sure you can summarize without leaking secrets of national security. Very simple, even for super spies.”

Griffin looked mildly annoyed. “I was looking at a picture of my wife,” he said, which made her wish she hadn’t asked. But then he added, “The secretary delivered a packet allegedly from Dorian, and then Tex called, saying Dorian changed his mind and wanted to meet. Pissed about the short window to recon the new area. No daylight. Cold out. Heard the gunshot, ran in, the elevator opened—” He stopped mid-sentence, his gaze again moving to the side as though seeing something in his mind’s eye. “I remember seeing dangling earrings. Distinctive shape. Like an upside-down question mark.”

As much as Sydney wanted to quip I-told-you-so, she held her tongue about his remembering this tiny yet significant detail. What she did ask was the shape of the woman’s face.

“Heart-shaped.”

She drew, then turned the paper so he could see it.

“A little wider in the forehead.”

Sydney made the correction, turned it back to him.

“That’s it.”

And so it went. Back and forth for the next two hours, with only a short break between for coffee. Unlike other drawings, with other witnesses, there was no small talk to make the witness more comfortable, nothing to fill in the seemingly endless minutes while she sketched and shaded. And as she worked in silence, she wondered what he was thinking as he sat there.

She felt his eyes on her but didn’t look up, and she decided she needed to settle this thing between them. Whatever it was, because hell if she even knew. Her pencil moving across the paper, she finally came out with it. “The truth is that I was upset partly that you consulted Carillo instead of me.”

“Why?”

She put down her pencil and looked right at him. “I
called
you over Christmas.”

“I know.”

“I just thought . . .”

“I was in Mexico. On a mission with Marco. I didn’t get the message until yesterday.”

Which made her feel every bit the idiot. “Doing what?”

“Trying to find the route they’re using to smuggle terrorists into the U.S. via Mexico. Unfortunately, not successful.”

“Oh.”

And the rest of the sketch was done in silence, because Sydney had no idea where to go next, and it was clear that neither did Griffin. By the time she finished shading in the hair, he appeared more than ready for this to be over. She showed him the final version.

He reached out. “May I?”

She handed it to him, and their fingers brushed as he took it from her. His attention, however, was on the drawing.

He studied it. “Something’s off . . .”

“What would you do to change this? Make it look more like her?”

He held up his hand, blocking out part of the drawing, probably to see if he could isolate what was bothering him. “Her cheekbones,” he said after a few moments. “They were higher. Sharp, but nice. She was pretty.”

In that deadly sort of way, she told herself as she erased the area, resketched, then showed him.

He nodded. “Definitely her.”

Once he decided there were no further changes, she gave him the final drawing, and was glad when Carillo knocked on the door, saying Tex was done interviewing Trip.

All she could think about was that she still had no idea where she or Griffin stood. She told herself it didn’t bother her at all.

Sometimes the lies came easily.

13

New Year’s eve dawned
bright and cold, and when Griffin entered his office that morning, he tossed his keys on his desk, his gaze catching on the envelope that Dorian had sent.

“I was about to go get coffee,” Tex said, stopping in the doorway.

“Already had some.” He picked up the envelope. “These are the passes that came for you yesterday.”

“The From Sticks to Bricks charity fund-raiser?”

“The same. I was wondering if Dorian sent them on his own, or was he forced? Of course, the bigger question is, why?”

“Since he thinks we’re reporters, maybe it was to talk us
out
of doing an investigative article. I think we should go.”

“
You
should go. Someone needs to work surveillance.”

“Two-man team’s not going to cut it,” Tex said. “Who are you planning for a third person?”

“It’s New Year’s eve. Not like there’s anyone around.”

Tex sat in one of the chairs and leaned back, propping his boots up on the edge of Griffin’s desk. “There’s always Fitzpatrick.”

“She’s on administrative leave.”

“Like red tape has ever stopped us? Or are you trying to avoid her?”

“Why would I do that?”

Tex gave a cynical laugh. “Talk about stepping around the elephant in the room.”

“Any two-ton behemoths present are wearing cowboy boots. And for the record,
she’s
the one who asked not to be included.
I’m
merely respecting her wishes.”

“You need to tell her, Griff. Before you do anything stupid.”

“Stupid?”

“Like sleep with her.”

“Weren’t you on your way to get coffee?”

Tex stood. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Close the door on the way out . . . and take your elephant with you.”

Syd had just
returned from the grocery store when Tex called, asking, “Any chance you’re free tonight, starting around five?”

“Depends,” she said. “If you have a better offer, I’m there.”

“Stakeout. Dress warm and bring a gun.” He told her what was going on. Not what she had in mind for New Year’s eve. Still, it beat sitting at home with Carillo and company.

Sydney walked into
the
Washington Recorder
right at closing, and one of the staff looked up, saw her, then made a phone call. Apparently her presence around here was old hat. A minute later the elevator door opened and Tex emerged in a tuxedo. “A little overdressed, aren’t you?” Sydney asked once the elevator started its ascent.